L.A. film critics name “Moonlight” best of 2016

USA - “Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’ moving, multi-part tale depicting a boy’s growing self-awareness as he becomes a young adult, was named Best Film of 2016 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

The L.A. group, whose choices are typically more esoteric than many other critics’ or industry groups, put much of its attention to two favorites: “Moonlight” (which received four awards, including Best Director and Best Cinematography), and Damien Chazelle’s musical, “La La Land” (which earned one award and was a runner-up in five other categories).

Best Supporting Actor Mahershala Ali, as a drug dealer who befriends a bullied young boy in “Moonlight,” was also cited last week by the New York Film Critics Circle. Runner-up was Issey Ogata, in the Martin Scorsese religious drama, “Silence.”

But some of their other choices were surprising.

Adam Driver, who plays a bus driver who writes poetry in-between his shifts behind the wheel in Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson,” won the Best Actor award over Casey Affleck of “Manchester by the Sea.” Affleck’s costar, Michelle Williams, was also beat out for Best Supporting Actress by Lily Gladstone, who plays a girl strangely drawn to a female substitute teacher in “Certain Women.” Isabelle Adjani received the Best Actress award for performances in two films: as a rape survivor in Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle,” and as a philosophy professor whose marriage dissolves in “Things to Come.” Runner-up in this category was Rebecca Hall as a TV newswoman who commits suicide on air in “Christine.” “The Handmaiden,” Park Chan-wook’s sumptuous and twisty romantic thriller set in Korea during the Japanese occupation, earned the Best Foreign Language Film Award, while the Japanese anime “Your Name” won Best Animated Film.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ black-aspitch dystopian romance “The Lobster,” in which single people who cannot find a mate must be turned into animals, picked up Best Screenplay.

(cbs)